I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew.
29 for the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. 30 Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, 31 so they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, part of a segment that embraces verses 1-32, have the theme that Jewish apostasy is not final. Paul discusses the faithfulness of God as a mystery. I begin this introduction to my discussion with a prayer.
Lord Jesus, I pray for your family, the Jews. Preserve them from the prejudice and persecution of the church, the mosque and the secular governments of the world. Forgive humanity our sins against your people in the past. Enable the church to honor them today by advocating for them, to stand by and with them, and to fight fiercely against all forms of sin against them. Help me as a person of faith in Christ to give thanks that Israel taught us to look for and to expect a messiah. Help me, in every aspect of my life, to be faithful to your love, not only believing in you as the Messiah, but also following you as my Lord and Savior. Amen.
If we step back, we can see that Paul is wrestling with his version of the saving plan of God. We might even call it a philosophy of history from the perspective of the significance of the coming of Christ. The issue is that the Jewish people have received the promises and calling of God. How can Paul now say that Gentiles can now claim such promises and calling? He will respond by sketching out the historical dealings of God with humanity. If we go back to the argument in Romans 1-8, Paul says that Christ is the “end of the Law.” He is saying that the Law had its place in the saving plan of God for humanity, but that Christ has now fulfilled that purpose. The saving plan of God continues in calling people to faith in Christ rather than obedience to the Law. Yet, this occurs in a way that fulfills the purpose of the Law. In Romans 9-11, Paul is working on the role of Israel in the formation of the people of God. The political organization of Israel, whether as a tribal federation or as sacral kingship, was the form the covenant people of God took as the focus of the saving plan of God for humanity. Yet, the prophetic notion of the remnant within Israel (I Kings 19:10-14, Deuteronomy 29:4, Isaiah 29:10, Psalm 69:22-23) is a reminder that Israel has always contained the faithful and the faithless. The same is true today. Paul and the disciples are prominent examples of a remnant from the Jewish faith that has embraced Christ as fulfilling the saving purpose of God. However, this means the historical form of the people of God needs to shift from the political organization of the nation of Israel to the formation of the church as the Body of Christ. Bringing people into this community is now the center of the formation of the people of God who are to be a light to the nations. The church fulfills the saving purpose of God in such a way that it does not replace Israel but fulfills the purpose of Israel in the world as the people of God. This means the church must always humbly acknowledge its indebtedness to Israel and therefore its Jewish roots. The rejection of the gospel by the Jewish people means that the people of God presently divide along the lines of Judaism and Christianity. Even though Israel has rejected the saving purpose of God in Christ, God has not rejected Israel. For God to do so would mean that Christians, newly incorporated into Israel and the people of God, should have some anxiety about whether God will abandon them for some new people! Thus, God remains faithful to the people of the old covenant. Sadly, the history of the church is that it has claimed as an exclusive quality the election of God only for itself.[1] In the process, the church needs to admit its complicity in the spread of anti-Semitism. However, the way people of God will find their destiny is to find their unity in Christ. The faith and hope of the church includes the preservation and redemption of Israel. The hope of Israel in this world is the intimate concern the church has for it.[2] It ought to pain us that when Jews see the cross or think of the church, they do so with fear. The church needs to admit that while it must have a respectful relation with all religions, it must have a special relationship with Judaism. We will never understand truly Jesus or the early church if we reject the Jewishness of its origin. In the process, the faithfulness of the love of God to Israel will become visible to all. Thus, the providence of God is such that God incorporates the faithlessness and stubbornness of Israel into the saving plan of God for humanity. God is in fact at work in all things, even in the Jewish people largely rejecting the gospel, for the good of those who love God. God has considered human sin in the saving plan for the redemption of humanity.[3] Since the way God created resulted in the formation of independent creatures, human sin became the cost.[4] Such a view of saving history ought at least to raise the issue of whether Judaism and the church are the remnant God has for a people from within the human race that God intends to save in the end. Such a philosophy keeps in tension the purpose (choice, election, predestination) of God and respect for the freedom and dignity of those whom God created. The action of God is prior to all human action, since God is the source of our being. If God is to exercise providential care for humanity and its destiny, then obviously, God is at work in all things, bringing good out of evil, and moving humanity toward its destiny in Christ. Another way to say this is that God is present everywhere at the same time. Yet, God is at work in all things in a way that shows respect for the freedom and dignity of those whom God has created. God chooses to respect the freedom and dignity of those whom God has made within the limits determined by God so that the saving purpose of God for humanity will reach its divinely appointed end. We know that end because of Christ, in whom God is acting to reconcile and redeem humanity.
The election of the one man, Jesus of Nazareth, demonstrates God as merciful in judgment. The purpose of God for humanity is a gracious end that already has a gracious beginning. Paul has shown us that one aspect of the Incarnation is that God takes the place of humanity in bearing the bitterness of the natural human end. Christ died for us. God has interrupting the natural act-consequence of divine judgment. God has shown humanity supreme favor by doing so. Israel as the chosen, elect human community was the environment out of which Jesus of Nazareth arose and through which the saving purpose of God is revealed to humanity. The honor of God dwells in this historical community. The people of God exist in two historical forms, one that is passing in Israel and one that is coming in the church. In a sense, Israel represents the passing of the old humanity so that the new humanity can come. Those who resist God are passing away. The church needs this contribution of Israel. One cannot hear the witness of the church to the past event of Jesus of Nazareth or to the living future promised in Christ to humanity without the background and undertone of the Jewish people, which spiritually nourished Jesus yet also, surprisingly, crucified him. The election of Israel shows discloses that God elects a community for fellowship with God through grace and for fellowship with humanity. As Paul has shown, God chooses to have fellowship with the frailty of the flesh, those who suffer and die, in order to clothe humanity with glory. Israel reveals the depth of human need as well as the depths God will go for the sake of establishing the covenant with humanity. In a sense, the promise of the election of a historical community is now through Israel and the church. Israel is the smitten servant of God prophesied in Isaiah. Yet, the purposes of God do not depend upon that historical community to be the faithful servant who suffers. Israel depends upon the attitude of God toward it. We could imagine a different scenario for Israel. Suppose Israel had fulfilled its election as the people of God by responding positively to the proclamation of Jesus. In that case, it would witness to the passing of the old humanity as taken up in the confession of the whole community of God of the coming rule of God. It would supplement and harmonize with the witness of the hope and promise founded in the resurrection of Jesus. As the promised Messiah of Israel, Israel would already become new as God translates Israel from death to life. In its refusal to accept that the old is passing away and the new is coming, it shows the depth of the human need for grace. It refuses to see that Christ died for the sins of the Jewish people as well as for the Gentile. Israel keeps looking backward when it needs to look forward. Old things have passed away and the new has already come. Divine mercy is the lens through which we need to see Jewish unbelief. It might have served the purpose of God by responding with faith, but it also serves the divine purpose by its resistance. Israel has united with much of humanity in its resistance to the gospel. It disrupts the historical community of the people of God by doing so. The church form of the people of God shows God has elected humanity, not just a nation, for fellowship with God. God elects them for salvation. In that sense, life surrounds death and the rule of God through Christ surrounds hell. We learn all this through the event of revelation in Jesus of Nazareth. We cannot penetrate behind it or ignore it. The task of the church is to witness to its truth. In the presence of death, the church witnesses to life. In the presence of the old humanity, the church witnesses to the coming of the new humanity. The church that witnesses to the gospel in this way discloses the direction and purpose of Israel. Israel shares this mission. The church confirms the election of Israel by its witness to the event of revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth. The church discloses the meaning of the history of Israel. The church is no more than Israel fulfilling its fulfilling its purpose in living by nothing else but the grace of God. The church confesses its unity with the Jewish people and with the rest of humanity in its witness to the hope of humanity in Christ.
We can see the record in the Old Testament that God continually held out a gracious hand to a disobedient people of God. We see the same in the New Testament. God does not abandon the attempt to address Israel. Thus, the crucifixion of Jesus does not allow Christians to treat Jews as accursed by God. The crucifixion is no basis for anti-Semitism. The Jewish origin of the church is relevant to how the church treats the Jewish people. Even the original resistance to Jesus (crucifixion) and to the message of Paul by the Jewish people has meant the good news brought to all people. Such is the providential care of God for humanity that God can take what human beings intend for evil and turn it into good. The hardened heart of the Jewish people became an integral part of the salvation-history that leads to gentiles hearing and responding to the gospel. The growth of the church among the gentiles has the partial intent of showing to the Jewish people what God intended for the mission of Israel. Yet, even in its resistance to this insight, Israel remains the possession of God. [5]
Since we began this introduction with a prayer, I invite you to conclude with a prayer. In a moving intercessory prayer for Jewish people, Henri Nouwen displays a very Christian view of our relationship with and our prayers for the Jews:
Give them peace and freedom after the many centuries of persecution and oppression; give them a safe home in Israel . . . give their children the “Shalom” in its full sense of physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.
I pray especially that you give to the Jews the generosity of heart to keep forgiving us Christians for the cruelties and atrocities to which we have subjected them.[6]
In verses 1-2, a segment that extends to verse 10, Paul focuses upon the two-sided character of the saving purpose of God, by showing a remnant exists according to grace and the rest experience hardening, an argument that recapitulates the previous point. 1I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. “How could anyone think that I could believe that God has rejected his people? No Jew could believe such a thing, and I am a Jew.” 2 God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew (suggesting God has known beforehand and that God knew their history beforehand.[7]
In verses 29-32, a segment that began in verse 25, Paul affirms that salvation will come to all Israel once the fullness of the Gentiles has come.
29 For the gifts (χαρίσματα, those listed in 9:4-5) and the calling (κλῆσις, to the rule of God proclaimed by Jesus, referring to Israel as the chosen people and not just the remnant) of God are irrevocable (ἀμεταμέλητα, in the sense of not affected by a change of mind or without regret as in II Corinthians 7:10). God will not desert Israel because God is unchangeable. Israel is not rejected because of the unchangeable nature of God. The English word “irrevocable” appears nowhere else in Scripture but here in verse 29. On one hand, the Scriptures acknowledge that seasons of blessing may be temporary. Rains come and go. Crops boom and bust. Riches can be transient. But Paul links the irrevocable gift and calling of God to an attribute of God, not merely to an action. Despite disobedience, God still offers mercy to the people of God. 30 Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience. God's plan is to make disobedience an opportunity for showing mercy. It was true for Gentiles and shall be true for Israel. 31 So they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they too may now receive mercy. God’s plan is to use disobedience as a means of mercy. There is a Divine purpose in the sin of humanity and in the faithfulness of Israel - to show God’s mercy. 32 For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all. Recall Hosea. His son Lo ammi — “not my people” — was not the final word of the Lord on prostitute Israel. They would again be called the children of God (1:10). Perhaps parents can best understand the heart which grants mercy in response to disobedience. It is a heart of love ... despite. A heart that longs for relationship over punishment. A heart that puts more stock in the future than in the past. Here again the word “irrevocable” comes into play in a different way. It also means “without regret”; something is given with no claim to do-overs. The only other place the same word appears is II Corinthians 7:10: “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation and brings no regret [‘irrevocable’], but worldly grief produces death.” Godly grief over sin connected to repentance. This is something we should foster. We should ask God for it. We should celebrate it. And we should claim the truth of our sin without regret. In a similar way, God has gifted and called Israel with no regret, no possibility of changing that decision given new circumstances). "All," Jew and Gentile, also refers to every class of persons admitted to the rule of God, not every individual. Paul is affirming that the God of Israel stood by the election of the people in spite of its rejection of Jesus, in expectation that all Israel would finally come to see the work of God for it in the sending of Jesus. The point is that the righteousness of God remains because the disobedience of Israel has led to God showing mercy upon all.
Chapter 11 would suggest universalism, or predestination saturated with God’s love. This verse at least suggests the thought of a reconciliation of all things. Other passages in the New Testament would deny this, however. This does not refer to the final salvation of everyone, but everyone looked at collectively. Augustine emphasized that God did not force us to sin. Had God done so, it would not be our own sin, but such a view shatters the very notion of sin. Rather, God has taken our foreseen sin into account and also looked ahead to the future redemption and consummation.[8] Schleiermacher would argue along similar lines.[9] Christian theology ought to find in the permission of sin the cost of the creaturely independence at which the creative action of God aims.[10]
Paul has expressed a certain view of history that revolves around the revelation of God in Christ. Adam represents a time of ignorance and thus no guilt. The Torah given through Moses has had the purpose of showing people their guilt. This experience of the people of God reveals that all forms of law or living by a code will fail because of the inability of the code to make a tribe or community pure, the arrogance it engenders toward other people, and the inevitable violence to which it will bring people. Christ has come to end all such views of the people of God. Within that context, God has selected Israel to show forth the divine purpose in revealing the failure of the law and opening the door to the salvation of all through Christ. Paul further believed in the eschatological nearness of the rule of God through the event of Christ and through the presence of the Spirit, a rule that bring reconciliation and peace for Jew and Gentile who find in Jesus of Nazareth their Messiah. Paul saw evidence for this view of the providence of God in what he was witnessing in his ministry. While his own Jewish people rejected the gospel, gentiles accepted it. God shows sovereignty over all things by taking the bad, the rejection of the gospel by most Jewish people, and working through that to bring salvation to the world. God demonstrates a form of wisdom that is deeper than that of human wisdom by exercising such providential care for the people of God and for humanity.[11]
The tension in Paul between the working out of the purpose of God in history and in individual lives on the one hand and the responsibility individuals have for their choices on the other, is quite real. Paul has thus far emphasized the action of God in Christ and through the present operation of the Spirit to accomplish the purpose of forming the people of God apart from Torah or any adherence to a code. The exhortations by Paul for the people of God to look a certain way in their life together, governed by love that has the effect of reconciliation and peace, suggests his readers have some responsibility to embrace the exhortation. God has a purpose that God intends to become real among the people of God, while at the same time, God does not intend this purpose to become real without the cooperation of human beings. In that way, God makes room for human beings in a way that respects their will and choice. God can bring good out of any choice human beings make, demonstrating the sovereignty of God. The supreme example of the hope Paul has is that while his own Jewish people have surprisingly rejected the offer of salvation through faith in Christ, gentiles have surprisingly embraced the good news, thereby giving him the confidence that God will also save Israel. Paul does not resolve the tension. Rather, given the context, he will focus upon the accomplishment of the purpose of God in one context, and on the responsibility of his hearers to embrace his message on the other.[12]
As modern readers, we have far more history of the church and its mission from which to learn than did Paul. Much of the world has rejected the gospel. We see this rejection even more in recent decades. We also see the obscurity of the life of the people of God that makes acceptance of the gospel harder. If we applied the reasoning of Paul to our situation, it could be that God will show sovereignty over humanity by taking even the perversions of the fellowship of the Body of Christ in the life of the church as a means God will use in the divine government of the world to hold open an opportunity of sharing in this salvation the rule of God will bring for those who now take offense at the church. [13]
Pannenberg has an extensive discussion of this passage around the theme of the church and Israel. Paul raises the question whether the rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ by most of the Jewish people means that God has rejected his people in 11:1. The answer is an emphatic negative. How could Christians be certain of their own comparatively new membership in the circle of the elect of God if God did not remain faithful to such election despite the unbelief of Israel? This is the point the apostle makes when he advocates the inviolability of the election of the Jewish people in 11:29 and 9:6. He has in mind Christian assurance of election. God has not annulled the covenant with the Jewish people. Yet, how could Paul cling to this conviction in view of what was for him particularly the painful experience of the overwhelming rejection of the gospel by his own people? The primary solution lies in the remnant concept of Old Testament prophecy. He could point to Elijah and the Jewish-Christian community. As the people of God, Israel is for the time being confined to this remnant, but at the same time the people of God is expanding as the mission of the apostle to the Gentiles is bringing in believers from the nations in 9:24-26. Paul sees an abiding link between the church and the Jewish people, a link he describes in terms of the root of the olive tree that carries the wild branches that contrary to normal rules have been grafted into it in 11:17-18. The hardening of Israel by God serves the purpose of bringing the gospel to the Gentiles, so that the hardening does not finally exclude from God or from sharing in divine salvation. At the same time, the history of the church has shown that it has not heeded the warning by Paul that we find in verses 17-24 of claiming an exclusive election for itself.[14]
What about the Jews?[15] That is a question that crops up from time to time in the church. It is not a biblical question. The New Testament question is, “What about the Gentiles? How shall those who have had no part in the promises of God to Israel be saved by the God of Israel?” As Christians, we are “honorary Jews,” those who have been adopted into the family of God. We must repent of the church’s historic sins against the Jews and work in our own day for the peace and preservation of God’s people, the Jews.
Today, we must talk about sin, the sin of anti-Semitism, the sin of anti-Judaism. We must talk as Christians. We must admit to our beloved church’s complicity in the long, terrible history of persecution of the Jews. Such persecution was especially acute in the Hellenistic and Roman domination of Israel. When the church gained influence in the power structure with Constantine, instead of guiding political leaders away from anti-Semitism, and it could have done through a faithful reading of Romans 9-11, it bowed to the political and cultural policies of anti-Semitism. It did so on what most of us would now view as twisted theological reasoning.
The question of our relationship to the Jews is an old one. Yet, the gifts and calling of God irrevocable, says Paul in Romans 11:29.
First, we as Christians need the Jews, for the promises of God to the Jews are the basis on which our faith in Jesus rests. We are related to Judaism in a way that differs from our relationship to any other faith. There is no way to understand Jesus without understanding the faith of Israel. The Old Testament is not a meaningless collection of irrelevant ancient writings. The Old Testament is also our good news. The good news embodied in Jesus is the good news that we hear preached in the Old Testament, namely, that God is going to have a people.
Writing in a Nazi prison cell in 1943, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote,
My thoughts and feelings seem to be getting more and more like the Hebrew Scriptures and no wonder. I have been reading it much more than the New Testament for the last few months. It is only when one knows the ineffability of the name of God that one can utter the name of Jesus Christ. It is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything would be gone, that one can believe in the resurrection and a new world. It is only when one submits to the law that one can speak of grace. . . . I don’t think it is Christian to want to get to the New Testament too soon and too directly.
Second, although we need the Jews, it is quite understandable why many Jews may not want us. It is painful for us to realize that many Jews view our beloved church with great pain and even some bitterness. The cross, the symbol of our faith, was horribly twisted and transformed, in our sin of anti-Judaism, as a sign of torture against God’s very own people. When Jews look at the cross, no wonder some of them view the cross with bitterness. Their bitterness is a testimonial to our church’s tragic infidelity.
Thus, Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits, when asked a few years ago what Jews would like from Christians, replied, “All we want of Christians is that they keep their hands off us and our children.” These words are painful to hear, but they are words that we must hear for our own good. The Jews remind us of a sad, terrible history of Christian wrongs against the Jews, and we do not much want to be reminded of our sin. It is painful to be reminded that some of the same hateful feelings and actions that led the Gentile Romans to crucify the Jew, Jesus, have led fellow Christians to persecute Jesus’ people, the Jews. Rather than deny that history, we ought to repent and ask God to forgive us our sins against God’s people.
Third, I think that we Christians must admit that we have tragically, by our sin against the Jews, forfeited our responsibility, our right, to try to convert the Jews. Christ has called us to go into all the world and make disciples (Mt 28). If the Jews are going to believe that Jesus is their redeemer, then it will have to be from people other than those of us who have so betrayed our redeemer through 2,000 years of persecution, indifference, and complicity in violence against the Jews. If we want to do anything for our sisters and brothers in Christ, the Jews, then we might urge them to be faithful to the religion of Israel, rather than attempt to convert them out of that faith.
If we are converted to Christ, if we are “saved” by Jesus, then that means that we are converted into the promises of God to Israel. The best way to think of ourselves, in relationship to Jews, is that we are “honorary Jews.” We have been adopted into a family that was not originally ours. That was the great miracle that still so astounded Paul. He had no doubt that God’s promises had been made to Israel. The amazing revelation that still astounded Paul was that, in Jesus, God’s gracious salvation had been extended even to the Gentiles, we Gentiles.
Let us, in our celebration of that adoption, in our attempt to respond faithfully to the salvation that has come to us in Jesus, never in any way think or act in a way that denigrates God’s people, the Jews. The good news is that, despite our sin, God has not rejected his people. Despite the centuries of horrible, unparalleled injustice toward the Jews, the Jews continue. That means that the promises of God continue and are trustworthy. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 462, 470-72.
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics 34.4
[3] Augustine, City of God, 14.27; 14.11.1.
[4] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 76.
[5] Barth, Church Dogmatics 34.4
[6] (Henri Nouwen, A Cry for Mercy: Prayers from the Genesee [New York: Doubleday, 1981], p. 116.)
[7] Sanday and Headlam
[8] City of God, 14.27; 14.11.1.
[9] Christian Faith, 79ff.
[10] Pannenberg Jesus God and Man, 76.
[11] Based on Sanday and Headlam.
[12] Sanday and Headlam.
[13] Pannenberg Systematic Theology, Volume III, 525.
[14] Systematic Theology, Volume III, 462, 470-72.
[15] William H. Willimon, 2005, is the source of the following reflections.
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